“I really do not understand,” says the lawyer, bewildered. “What insult can there be? I am speaking, sir, in most sober earnest.”
“Shall I fan you, Wilfrid? or send for some sal volatile?” says Fanshawe, derisively. “Don’t be an ass,” he adds in a whisper. “This sensible old fellow will think it his duty to shut you up in a private mad-house, if you talk like that. Pull yourself together, and answer him sensibly.”
Mr. Folliott surveys the speaker as a timid person may look at a lion riding on a velocipede in a circus-ring.
“If Mr. Bertram would place me in communication with his solicitor matters would be facilitated,” he murmurs.
“I have no solicitors,” replies Bertram. “If you will pardon what may seem an offensive opinion, I regard all men of law as poisonous parasites growing on the rotten trunk of a society which has the axe of retribution laid at its roots.”
Mr. Folliott is too astonished to be offended: “I fail to follow you, sir, but I have no doubt you mean something very profound. Your cousin did not, I imagine, read your articles in the reviews, but I have read one or two of them. However, notwithstanding your extraordinary opinions, you are a man of birth and breeding, and must, in a measure, be a man of the world, sir. You must know that you must allow me to fulfil my office. This will has to be proved and probate taken out.”
“Where is the necessity?”
“Be so good as not to play with me. You must accept the inheritance or decline it. In event of your refusal, of your formal and final refusal, the whole of this property is to go to the testator’s old college at Oxford—Magdalen College.”
“Ah! that is a consolation.”
“Why so, sir?”